@audius/hedgehog

Hedgehog is alternative to Metamask that manages a user's private key and wallet on the browser. It exposes a simple API to allow you to create an authentication scheme to let users sign up and login to their wallet across multiple browsers and devices. hedgehog.audius.co.

With Hedgehog:

• 😍 Users can make accounts in your DApp with a username + password.
• 😱 Users don't have to worry about private keys, no mnemonics.
• 🔏 You can build systems that fund users' wallets, sign transactions, but never control those wallets directly.
• 🌇 You can focus on building your business logic, rather than managing wallets.

Installation

npm i --save @audius/hedgehog

Docs && Examples

Check out our full technical docs and api how-to.

For a quick browser-side demo, look no further. For a full end-to-end auth demonstration, see our demo repo.

Why Use This?

Not All Transactions Are Created Equal

Currently available wallets treat every transaction as if it were moving around your life’s savings. Hedgehog was built for use-cases involving low-to-no financial value.

NOTE: The primary improvement to end-user experience is by hiding wallet complexity and not forcing users to constantly confirm transactions - The opposite of what you’d want when moving significant money around.

Is Hedgehog Right for your DApp?

Hedgehog isn’t right for every DApp. Massive improvements in user experience are only possible through tradeoffs. As a general rule Hedgehog should not be used for apps involving significant sums of money. As a bridge, one could start users on Hedgehog and suggest migrating to a more secure wallet if their stored value increases beyond a certain threshold; the Hedgehog paradigm is interoperable with existing web3 providers too.

[Good use cases]

• Signing data: If you’re building decentralized applications that rely on user signed data (eg. via EIP-712-esque signing schemes), Hedgehog could help simplify the experience if the stakes are low enough.
• Gaming DApp: Nothing ruins fun as much as signing transactions. If you’re building a gaming DApp that doesn’t use significant financial assets, improving UX is key.
• Decentralized Music Player: If you’re building consumer-facing DApps, Hedgehog will dramatically improve user experience and significantly increase your potential userbase.

[Bad use cases]

If your DApp involves moving around significant sums of money, then the tradeoff in security is most likely not worth it. Hedgehog’s primary improvement to end-user experience is by hiding the wallet and not forcing users to confirm transactions - The opposite of what you’d want when moving money around. We absolutely don’t recommend using Hedgehog in situations like these:

• Banking DApp
• Decentralized Lending
• Prediction Markets

A Closer Look

Hedgehog is a package that lives in your front end application to create and manage a user's entropy (from which a private key is derived). Hedgehog relies on a username and password to create auth artifacts, so it's able to simulate a familiar authentication system that allows users to sign up or login from multiple browsers or devices and retrieve their entropy. Those artifacts, through hedgehog, are persisted to a backend of your choosing.

NOTE: A private key is only computed and available client side and is never transmitted or stored anywhere besides the user's browser.

// Provide getFn, setAuthFn, setUserFn as requests to your database/backend service (more details in docs).
const hedgehog = new Hedgehog(getFn, setAuthFn, setUserFn)
let wallet
if (hedgehog.isLoggedIn()) {
  wallet = hedgehog.getWallet()
} else {
  wallet = await hedgehog.login('username', 'password')
  // or
  wallet = await hedgehog.signUp('username', 'password')
}
 

After creating or retrieving a user's wallet, you can either fund their wallet directly to pay transaction fees or relay their transactions through a EIP-712 relayer.

More details in the docs.